Comment Re:How much support do you need, honestly? (Score 2, Interesting) 263
As far as the "support" goes, it is not the same type of support that home users are looking for. Rather it comes in a couple of flavors.
1) Future product development. Businesses look for software that is actively be invested in. It allows them to know that revisions will be on the way to support new technologies, support their existing business functions, and add efficiency. Even if the software does everything they need it to do today, why would a business invest in training their staff, which is very expensive, only to discover that in 5 years the software isn't evolving with the rest of the ecosystem? In addition to looking for evolving solutions, businesses rely on backwards compatibility for Line of Business apps built on other software. They also look for compatibility with future platforms and LOB apps. Even if this means purchasing a new version, as long as it supports data, api, and ui compatibility / similarity, this allows a business to move forward without software becoming a business roadblock.
2) Sales and Feedback support. With commercial software, about 50% of the cost to businesses pays for "selling" the software in the first place. Sales relationships in the business world are not the same type of relationship a consumer has with a store like Best Buy. Sales staff work with the IT dept of a business to determine what solutions would be most effective, how to deliver and integrate those solutions, and how to build a full system out of many different pieces of software. Integration is key, additionally the IT departments can apply pressure through the sales staff to the commercial software provider for feature requests. Commercial software vendors actually do respond to these requests in future versions because if a good percentage of customers have asked for it, they know it will help drive sales.
3) Consistency, consistency, consistency. This is a reiteration of 1 and backwards compatibility in a way, but a business that is not software centric, should remain unfocused of software. It should only be a tool to enable them in providing services or products more efficiently and quickly. Business choose to pay for software that provides them with this consistency, and if it's not provided, they'll quickly take their money elsewhere.
All that being said. "Free" software can manage all of these things to a degree, for a price. 1 and 2 are most easily done and companies such as Red Hat and Oracle already provide these services. 3 though, is a little harder to come by when talking about Linux. Look at Picasa, a valiant effort to make a Linux version has been made, but for ever Linux distro there are if's, and's, or buts.
